Anthropology Second Half

Front 1

Religion

Back 1

A set of beliefs and rituals based on a unique vision of how the world ought to be, often focused on a supernatural power and lived out in community.

Front 2

Martyr

Back 2

A person who sacrifices his or her life for the sake of his or her religion.

Front 3

Saint

Back 3

An individual considered exceptionally close to God and who is then exalted after death.

Front 4

Sacred

Back 4

Anything that is considered holy

Front 5

Profane

Back 5

Anything that is considered unholy

Front 6

Ritual

Back 6

An act or series of acts regularly repeated over years or generations that embody the beliefs of a group of people and create a sense of continuity and belonging.

Front 7

Rite of Passage

Back 7

A category of ritual that enacts a change of status from one life stage to another, either for an individual or for a group.

Front 8

Liminality

Back 8

One stage in a rite of passage during which a ritual participant experiences a period of outsiderhood, set apart from normal society, that is key to achieving a new perspective on the past, future and current community.

Front 9

Communitas

Back 9

A sense of camaraderie, a common vision of what constitutes a good life, and a commitment to take social action to move toward achieving this vision that is shaped by the common experience of rites of passage.

Front 10

Pilgrimage

Back 10

A religious journey to a sacred place as a sign of devotion and in search of transformation and enlightenment

Front 11

Cultural Materialism

Back 11

A theory that argues that material conditions, including technology, determine patterns of social organization, including religious principles.

Front 12

Shamans

Back 12

Part-time religious practitioners with special abilities to connect individuals with supernatural powers or beings?

Front 13

Magic

Back 13

The use of spells, incantations, words, and actions in an attempt to compel supernatural forces to act in certain ways, whether for good or evil.

Front 14

Imitative Magic

Back 14

A ritual performance that achieves efficacy by imitating the desired magical result.

Front 15

Contagious Magic

Back 15

Ritual words or performances that achieve efficacy as certain materials that come into contact with one person carry a magical connection that allows power to be transferred from person to person.

Front 16

Symbol

Back 16

Anything that represents something else.

Front 17

Authorizing Process

Back 17

The complex historical and social developments through which symbols are given power and meaning.

Front 18

Class

Back 18

A system of power based on wealth, income, and status that creates an unequal distribution of a society’s resources.

Front 19

Egalitarian Society

Back 19

A group based on sharing of resources to ensure success with a relative absence of hierarchy and violence.

Front 20

Reciprocity

Back 20

The exchange of resources, goods, and services among people of relatively equal status; meant to create and reinforce social ties.

Front 21

Ranked Society

Back 21

A group in which wealth is not stratified but prestige and status are.

Front 22

Redistribution

Back 22

A form of exchange in which accumulated wealth is collected from the members of the group and reallocated in a different pattern.

Front 23

Potlatch

Back 23

Elaborate redistribution ceremony practiced among the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest

Front 24

Bourgeoisie

Back 24

Marxist term for the capitalist class that owns the means of production.

Front 25

Proletariat

Back 25

Marxist term for the class of laborers who own only their labor.

Front 26

Prestige

Back 26

The reputation, influence, and deference bestowed on certain people because of their membership in certain groups.

Front 27

Life Chances

Back 27

An individual’s opportunities to improve quality of life and realize life goals.

Front 28

Social Mobility

Back 28

The movement of one’s class position, upward or downward, in stratified societies.

Front 29

Social Reproduction

Back 29

The phenomenon whereby social and class relations of prestige or lack of prestige are passed from one generation to the next.

Front 30

habitus

Back 30

Bourdieu’s term to describe the self-perceptions, sensibilities, and tastes developed in response to external influences over a lifetime that shape one’s conceptions of the world and where one fits in it.

Front 31

Cultural Capital

Back 31

The knowledge, habits and tastes learned from parents and family that individuals can use to gain access to scarce and valuable resources in society.

Front 32

Intersectionality

Back 32

An analytic framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification.

Front 33

Income

Back 33

What people earn from work, plus dividends and interest on investments, along with rents and royalties.

Front 34

Wealth

Back 34

The total value of what someone owns, minus any debt.

Front 35

Health

Back 35

The abscence of disease and infirmity, as well as the presence of physical, mental, and social well-being.

Front 36

Illness

Back 36

The individual patient’s experience of being unwell.

Front 37

Sickness

Back 37

An individual’s public expression of illness and disease, including social expectationsabout how one should behave and how others will respond.

Front 38

Ethnomedicine

Back 38

Local systems of health and healing rooted in culturally specific norms and values.

Front 39

Ethnopharmacology

Back 39

The documentation and description of the local use of natural substancesin healing remedies and practices.

Front 40

Ethnopharmacology

Back 40

The documentation and description of the local use of natural substancesin healing remedies and practices.

Front 41

Biomedicine

Back 41

A practice, often associated with Western medicine, that seeks to apply the principles of biologyand the natural sciences to the practice of diagnosing disease and promoting healing.

Front 42

Human Microbiome

Back 42

The complete collection of microorganisms in the human body’s ecosystem.

Front 43

Health Transition

Back 43

The significant improvements in human health made over the course of the twentieth century that were not, however, distributed evenly across the world’s population.

Front 44

Health Transition

Back 44

The significant improvements in human health made over the course of the twentieth century that were not, however, distributed evenly across the world’s population.

Front 45

Critical Medical Anthropology

Back 45

An approach to the study of health and illness that analyzes the impact of inequality and stratification within systems of power on individual and group health outcomes.

Front 46

Medical Migration

Back 46

The movement of diseases, medical treatments, and entire health-care systems, as well as those seeking medical care, across national borders.

Front 47

Illness Narratives

Back 47

The personal stories that people tell to explain their illnesses.